


We Come in Peace for All Mankind

by aph_pasta



Series: Que Será, Será [1]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Autistic Character, M/M, Mars, Mars mission, Science Fiction, Slow Burn, space mission
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-06-20
Packaged: 2020-02-10 03:47:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18652282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aph_pasta/pseuds/aph_pasta
Summary: 1. The Roman god of war2. The planet fourth in order from the Sun and conspicuous for its red color





	1. Chapter 1

_ Summers in New York were humid and sticky, and Ivan had taken to biking all the way to Rockaway Beach every day so he could bury his heels in freshly wet sand and let the waves splash against the soles of his feet. He was tall for his age, towering over the rest of his class, and had few friends, so many were afraid of him. He’d earned the nickname ‘commie’ from many kids his age because he had immigrated from Russia and still struggled with the English language and American way of life. The beach was where he went to escape the feeling that everyone around him simultaneously disliked him and was scared of him. With the sun and the sand and the sea and everyone around too busy enjoying those things to even notice him, Ivan felt at peace.  _

 

_ Whenever Ivan was needed at home, his younger sister would be sent to get him. She came running, clutching the handlebars of her bike in her hands, the back wheel swinging wildly in the air with each step. By the time she got to him, she would be huffing and puffing, cheeks red from the effort, and would be on her way back to the house before he’d even managed to run over to the boardwalk and get on his bike. She was sent when their mother needed an extra hand with dinner or when the cat went missing for too long and turned up at someone else’s home, so he’d have to go and fetch her. Once, Natalya came by foot, no bike in sight, yelling that America was going to put a man on the moon and he had to come home and watch. He’d thought she was joking, but there was so much urgency in her voice that he hopped on his bike and let her stand on the pegs on the back wheel as he pedaled home. _

 

_ His mother was yelling out the window from their second floor apartment for him to get up there as fast as he could, and he dropped his bike in front of Mrs. Katz’s balcony and dashed up the stairs two at a time. Inside his family’s cluttered living room, his mother and father and both of his sisters were crowded around the TV, not even bothering to sit they were so excited. Ivan stood on tiptoe on top of the couch so he could see and craned his neck to watch.  _

 

_ There was the fuzzy black and white image of someone in a suit so huge they were barely recognizable as human. The voices on the TV were hard to hear as well and Ivan held his breath so he wouldn’t miss a word. _

 

_ “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” _

 

“T-minus 10”

 

Ivan took in a deep breath.

 

“T-minus 9”

 

His thumb brushed against the leg of his pumpkin-orange ACE suit.

 

“T-minus 8”

 

Ivan breathed out and thought for a moment about how if he stuck out his tongue and wiggled it a bit to the right, he could touch the microphone part of his headset.

 

“T-minus 7”

 

He said a mental goodbye to earth, and the thought that he could blow up in flames in the next second also briefly crossed his mind, as it had many times before.

 

“T-minus 6”

 

A roar ripped through the rocket and it began to shake violently as the main engines fired. The rest of the countdown was static in Ivan’s ear as the shaking became more and more violent. His stomach dropped, then he swore it pressed against the very backs of his ribs- then the fronts. A force harsher than a kick in the back knocked the wind out of him and he struggled for breath. Slipstream screamed outside the rocket, but all Ivan could hear clearly was his breathing and the pounding of his heart. There was a loud bang and smoke was visible outside the windows for barely enough time to be noticed, then he could just see the flash of everything rushing by once more and the rattling finally stopped.

 

Ivan could feel the relief from the ground once they had passed the point where the only way to possibly abort the mission involved dangerously landing the rocket backwards at mach 7. Now, if something went wrong, they would be able to take a much safer course of action. 

 

They reached orbit in the atmosphere, but the crew had to stay in their uncomfortably crouched positions. The rocket would orbit Earth a few times, before finding the right angle at which to activate the second set of booster rockets and use Earth’s orbit to slingshot themselves towards the moon.

 

At that point, when they got the go ahead from the ground, the commander began turning on the boosters’ engines, carefully following the checklist they’d gone over again and again during simulations. The mission commander was a seasoned astronaut who had been recommended to NASA’s flight academy by the Swedish air force, for which he was a test pilot. The commander’s name was so long that the crew didn’t bother trying to sound it all out. Instead, they just called him Ber, or sometimes Grizzly Bear, when he forgot to shave. Ivan liked him well enough. He was calm and level-headed, and he was the quiet type who didn’t rattle on and on with endless chatter. They got along in a professional manner more than a friendly one, but that was alright with Ivan. He often found that he was really just thankful to have a commander who didn’t get on his nerves.

 

While Ber did the difficult job of readying the booster rockets, Ivan went through his own checklist, which had been conveniently taped to the wall in front of him. He had a computer placed by his hands which showed their position relative to the Earth, the exosphere, and the moon, among other things. He monitored the screen for anything that could possibly pose a threat, as the outer layers of the atmosphere were littered with junk like defunct satellites and booster rockets that had spiraled into orbit rather than burning up or crashing into the ocean. 

 

“We’re clear around the rocket, the only thing anywhere near us is a small solar array a few hundred feet below,” he reported.

 

His earpiece crackled with static, then came the response, “can we get velocity on that?”

 

“Roger.” Ivan zoomed in on the radar blip of the object beneath them, reading the little numbers floating next to it. He’d spent quite a lot of time in the past thinking specifically about the word roger, and how it didn’t make any sense that they used a name, which was a proper noun, as a way of saying yes. He’d questioned it many times before, but he’d learned that sometimes there was no sense in the English language and the expressions they used in communication with the ground, and sometimes he just needed to be quiet and do what he was asked. “I’m getting about 27,450 kilometers per hour, give or take a few.”

 

“Alright, we’re clear.”

 

Another voice came on to the radio, of the astronaut sitting right beside Ivan. It was strange to hear her voice both right in his ear through the radio and farther off from where she sat. “We are approaching suggested thruster activation point, are we go to continue?”

 

“Roger, you are go to continue. Have a safe trip.”

 

The booster rockets fired and once more, Ivan felt the wind knock out of him. He snuck a glance to the side at the other astronaut, finding her smiling like a child on a carnival ride. He had been in the same astronaut class as Amelia, and this was the second mission he had flown with her- the first was an orbital mission to repair a set of weather satellites and recover a severely damaged one, so it could be brought back to Earth and recycled. He found Amelia’s constant optimism and slightly childish attitude to be quite annoying, but (though he hated to admit it) he enjoyed working with her and admired her quick thinking and math skills. Though he didn’t express it outwardly, Ivan felt the same kind of pride Amelia did about the mission they were on. It was the kind of thing both of them had spent their whole lives dreaming of.

 

Leaving Earth orbit was an entire other kind of treat for an astronaut. The planet would slip away behind them, getting smaller and smaller until one could close an eye and reach out two fingers and pretend they were squishing a continent. It was hard to believe that this little dark sphere was teeming with life, and that soon this life would spread out even farther, until they commanded their whole solar system, and maybe even their whole galaxy. Pride swelled in Ivan’s chest when he could see the edges of the Earth lighting up, sunshine blossoming slowly over the West coast of Africa and the edge of Portugal. By now, the people in California who had come out to watch the launch were tucking themselves into bed, and the day in Europe had just begun.

 

Ivan turned his attention back to the computer monitor in front of him. Their speed was levelling out and he announced this, first to the ground, then to everyone else in the ship. Amelia whooped and was the first to unbuckle her seatbelt. She kicked against her seat cushion and tumbled forward, her short hair floating in a messy halo around her face. The next to join her was Ginevra, the final member of the crew. She had both fought in the Italian air force and worked as a flight surgeon. She represented the European Space Agency on the flight, and would soon have the honor of being the first Italian woman- and the second Italian ever- to land on the moon. 

 

When Ivan had first met Ginevra, he had been at a NASA party, where astronauts brought friends and family. He had known there was an Italian astronaut visiting to train in America, but hadn’t known anything about this person. He’d introduced himself to a man he heard speaking with an Italian accent and welcomed him to NASA, just to have a woman push him to the side and introduce herself as his new colleague. The man turned out to be Ginevra’s brother, who could barely manage to ride in a commercial airplane without getting nervous. 

 

Fortunately, Ginevra hadn’t remembered him just for his blunder. She teased him about it a little, but they quickly became friends. Ginevra was a very caring, motherly person, and constantly reminded Ivan to take care of himself and be sure he wasn’t overworked. He honestly didn’t know how he would have survived some of the most strenuous periods in his time as an astronaut without her. It was interesting to listen to her talk about the things she loved- her three adult children, medicine, and travelling, in that order. She had been to many different places around the world, and now she was taking the ultimate trip. Ivan thought if anyone deserved to be on this mission, it was her.

 

Ivan unbuckled his own seatbelt and joined the two women floating around in the cockpit. The area wasn’t all that large, about the size of a shipping crate, but compared to where they would be spending the next few months, it was roomy.

 

At first, zero-g took some getting used to. Ivan had to reorient himself and he knew he was putting too much energy into things like hooking his feet under handles so he wouldn’t float off and pushing himself forward. He also would have to get used to the stuffy feeling of the redistribution of blood in his body. After a while he’d be able to ignore that.

 

The journey to the moon would be nearly three days, and for now all they could really do was wait. There was no steering or flying of the rocket to be done, for at this point everything was commanded by people sitting behind computers on the ground. Ber would take over once they were close enough to the moon to begin orbit and eventually land in the Jackson module, named for the famed Project Mercury engineer.

 

Once they landed, a group of three scientists from the Tranquillity Lunar Base would be joining them for the second leg of the mission. Two of them, Roscosmos’s representatives on the mission, had trained with Ivan previously. The whole crew knew Eduard Von Bock very well, as he had had a major part in programming the computer systems they would be using on the mission. The other scientist, Tolvydas Laurinitis, was not as well known, but Ivan liked him. He was a geologist with a strong work ethic, and he was easily the smartest person on the crew. That is- if the third scientist wasn’t smarter than him.

 

Ivan only knew the other scientist by name- Matthieu Williams-Bonnefoy. He represented Canada, which had a space agency known for its lack of launchers powerful enough for anything larger than a sounding rocket and the fact that almost no one knew anything about their few major accomplishments. Matthieu was to be their biologist, mainly working in the field of botany, which wasn’t something Ivan found very interesting. He was more concerned with things like rockets and rovers, which he found to be absolutely fascinating.


	2. Chapter 2

_ Ivan hadn’t understood at first why his parents were taking him and his sisters around to what seemed like every furniture store in Queens. They’d spent hours jumping and flopping onto various couches and beds until the people who worked there chased them away and scolded them for not staying with their parents. Now, though, they were crowded in the living room, admiring two brand new chairs. They were both made of dark brown leather, and when Ivan tried to reach out and touch the arm, his mother swatted his hand away. His father sat down on one and pulled a lever, making the chair itself stretch out until a footrest popped up. His sisters both scrambled to climb on top of the other one, pushing at the lever until it reclined as well. Ivan pouted, sitting down on the floor with a huff when he realized there wasn’t space for him. His mother didn’t notice, even after he let out another, even more exaggerated huff, so he got up and shuffled into the kitchen, looking for some Tang. _

 

_ There were two large boxes on the floor of the kitchen, with a pile of torn plastic wrapping and packing peanuts. Ivan turned over the first box, which was about half his height, and pushed in two of the flaps on the top, so they met in the center. He taped them together with a roll of scotch sitting on the counter, and picked up the whole box, carrying it down the hallway. His family didn’t even notice and he made it to the bedroom he shared with his sisters. He had the top bunk because his older sister had gotten first dibs on the bottom, and Natalya still slept on a little cot meant for toddlers. There was a package of Crayola Crayons on the shelf just by the headboard of his bed. These crayons were special, because they had come in red and white wrapping paper on Christmas and he didn’t have to share them with anyone- especially not his sisters. He used them sparingly, only for the most important things like drawings to put on the refrigerator and coloring pages torn away from the Flinstones coloring books his parents bought for all the children to share.  _

 

_ Ivan decided this project was important enough for him to take out the crayons, so he grabbed the box off the shelf and carefully flipped over the top. The crayons were slightly worn down, but he hadn’t yet had to peel away any of the paper covering the precious centers of the crayons. He always hated having to do that, because it meant the crayons were getting closer and closer to becoming dull, useless nubs of wax. He looked over the selection of colors, hovering his finger over the tips of the crayons as he made his decision. A gold crayon in the corner that was really just a yellowed tan caught his eye and he plucked it out. This one still had a perfectly sharp tip and it glided smoothly when he started to draw on the cardboard. _

 

_ First, he drew a window on the side, and colored it as neatly as he could. He added a second window, and drew stars and a moon on this one, because he decided it must be able to reflect like a mirror. It took him what felt like hours to finish drawing and coloring. It was worth it, though, because when he was done, he had what in his mind was a full replica of the rocketship that had taken men to the moon.  _

 

_ When he came back from the beach the next day, he ran to his room, eager to play astronaut until he was called to the kitchen for dinner. His rocketship was nowhere to be found, though. Ivan ventured into the kitchen and stood to the side, watching his mother chop onions. _

 

_ “Mama?” he asked cautiously, “have you seen my spaceship?” _

 

_ “Your… spaceship?” she asked, giving him a weird look. She kept on chopping the onions, quickly forgetting his question. _

 

_ "My spaceship! The one in my room! It's gone!" _

 

_ His mother set the knife down and looked at him once more. "You mean the box? It was taking up space. That room isn’t just yours. You have to share it with your sisters too.” _

 

_ “Where’d you put it?” _

 

_ “I threw it away. We don’t need trash sitting around in the house.” _

 

_ “But mama! You don’t understand! I was going to take it to the moon!” Ivan protested, but his words fell on deaf ears. _

 

Landing on the moon was dangerously difficult. The gravity was only one-eightieth that of Earth’s, and the surface was covered in slippery, slick dust. Ivan had lost many a fellow astronaut in this stage of the journey. Just one miniscule mistake could cause one to lose control and slide too far and crash. The moon’s surface was pockmarked with craters of debris from doomed spaceships.

 

One of his classmates, a young man who was also from New York, had been killed when the pilot on his mission overshot the lander’s trajectory by just a few meters, and they collided into the edge of a crater. He left behind two daughters, a sobering reminder of the risks of his profession.

 

Ivan trusted Ber with his life. He was an experienced commander, and had been put through countless simulations and tests to make sure he was capable of landing. The entire crew had been trained on what to do in the event of an emergency. Still, Ivan knew that an accident could happen so fast he’d never have time to even think about putting an emergency escape plan into action. He knew he could die at any moment. The thought was terrifying.

 

A landing was executed in three main steps: first, the engines would be fired up and the ship would be slowed down as it approached the moon. Then, the crew moved into the Jackson Module and spent two long hours pressurizing it and ensuring there were absolutely no leaks between it and the command module they had flown in. Once NASA gave them the all clear, Ber took over and they began to slowly spin down to the moon’s surface.

 

There were buggies ready to meet them when they landed, and they latched onto the lander, pulling it a few miles South, to Tranquillity. The area was highly visible, marked by beacons and towers that reached into the black, sunless sky. As they approached, they could see the nose of a massive four-rocket ship docked what looked to be a mile away from the base. That was where they would be going in three days, after they’d had some time to rest and make their final preparations.

 

NASA took safety very seriously, so the crew spent another two hours sitting inside their lander, waiting for their connection to the lunar base to be certified as secure. During this time, Ivan sifted through the bag of personal items he was allowed to bring inside the spacecraft. Everything else he would need had been sent ahead of them a few weeks before. Inside the bag was a small Russian flag, which he planned to leave on the moon when they went out for their EVA. 

 

When they were finally allowed inside, Ivan relished the feeling of having his feet on the ground once more, even if he had to kangaroo-hop to get around efficiently in the low gravity. He normally would have allowed his crewmates to persuade him to stay out a little longer and maybe have some drinks with them, but he had been in what was practically a tin can with them for almost three days, and he needed some alone time. One of the people living long-term on Tranquillity pointed him down a long hallway, telling him that his room would have a card with his name on the front. He had already had some belongings sent up, and there would be a personal bag in his room for the days he spent here, and for what he took with him on his next ship.

 

Ivan was half hopping, half walking down the hall, when another young man crossed his path. He was quite short, with curly hair tied into a messy, short ponytail, and a pair of wire-framed glasses perched on his nose. Ivan assumed he must be one of the base’s scientists, or part of the maintenance staff. He continued down the hall until he found a metal door with his name written on a card next to it. The door slid open with the press of a button, and closed with another one. Inside the room were spartan accommodations: a crisply made bed, a steel desk bolted to the wall, and a rudimentary bathroom situated behind a screen. It was almost like a prison cell, save for the back wall, which was entirely made of layers of bulletproof glass, and provided a beautiful view of the lunar surface. 

 

Ivan stripped out of his flight suit and undergarments and put on a pair of boxers and a blue bathrobe that had been provided for him. He sat down on the bed, feeling the mattress creak under his weight. He could see the Earth, from here a tiny speck in the sky. It wasn’t the first time he had had this view, and he came to the same conclusion he had many times before in space: in the grand scheme of things, humans were just very small and insignificant. That thought about and bring up was that fundamentally, we were all a bunch of atoms trying to understbothered him slightly because that meant that all of humanity could disappear and no one would notice. If there was other life in the universe (something Ivan was adamantly against the possibility of), they wouldn’t even care if humans were suddenly gone, because they had never impacted their lives or even been successful in making contact with them. If Earth were to cease to exist, the rest of the universe would just keep going along like it always had. 

 

It also amazed Ivan how resilient and smart those tiny little creatures were. Humans were really just very advanced monkeys, yet here they were, exploring their solar system and trying to understand their world.

 

Ivan twisted to the side, laying his head on the pillow and pressing his feet flat against the blanket. He felt light, barely having to put any effort into moving. For a long while, he just stared out through the window. 

 

Even now, he still didn’t feel fully aware of the extent of his mission. In fact, now that he was on the moon, Ivan felt a bit like he was in a dream. He wondered if he’d be woken up and find himself in his bed at home, maybe with his cat kneading his chest or NPR playing on his alarm clock’s radio.

 

He sat up once more and leaned forward until he could reach the handle of the desk’s top drawer. He opened it and found a few postcards, printed with pictures of Tranquillity and the Earth rising up from far beyond. These postcards were easy to find on Earth as well, but ones that bore the postmark of the Moon’s only post office were rare collector’s items. Ivan planned to write a few generic letters on them and pick fans of his at random to send the cards to. 

 

The first postcard, however, was to go to his sisters. He started by asking how they were, then asked how his cat, who they were taking care of for the duration of his mission, was doing. He tried as best as he could to describe everything he was seeing, but the splendor of the Moon just couldn’t be condensed into one letter. He would take as many pictures as he could and send them to Earth as well, but he knew the only way to really understand just how special the Moon was was to go there.

 

He was lucky that he had the opportunity.

 

When the letter was finished, Ivan set it on the corner of the desk, with the pen haphazardly laid across it, and laid back down. This time, he kicked his legs under the blankets and pulled them up just below his chin. He was so exhausted that he had no trouble falling asleep.

 

In the morning, the crew trickled into the dining hall bit by bit. Ivan found himself across from Amelia, who mirrored him with a coffee mug clutched in her hands and an overall look of disheveledness.

 

Ginevra came by with a plate piled high with pastries, and cheerfully told him, “you should probably tie your robe up. Everyone can see your underwear.”

 

He blushed and quickly pulled the fabric shut to cover himself. Amelia gave a soft chuckle, which only served to make his face even redder.

 

Tolys was the next to come in, followed by the man Ivan had briefly seen the previous night. They sat down at the table, Tolys also nursing a mug of coffee. 

 

“You haven’t met Matthieu yet, have you?” Tolys asked him, finishing with a yawn. 

 

Ivan shook his head, and the man across from him reached out a hand for him to shake. “I’m Matthieu, your biologist. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” He spoke softly, and Ivan thought he noticed the ghost of an accent.

 

“It’s nice to meet you too,” he replied. When he shook Matthieu’s hand, he noticed that he had a weak grip, and he seemed to be quite thin and bony all over. He was tall, though, almost as much as Ivan, which was a rare sight.

 

A plate was deposited in front of Ivan, with a cheese danish and some apple slices on it. Ginevra sat down on his right side and held out a fork for him. “You can’t live off of just coffee,” she informed him, then handed another plate down to Tolys. Ivan rolled his eyes and took a bite of the danish. He looked up, and noticed a small smile on Matthieu’s face. The man quickly noticed he was being looked at and his face turned a bright red that spread all the way to his ears. 

 

When it seemed that the whole crew had settled in, someone hit a metal spoon against a glass and Ivan looked up to see Ber at the head of the table, looking impressive even in a bathrobe. 

 

“I just wanted to start off our morning by welcoming my crew and congratulating them on a safe flight in. And now, I have the honor of saying good morning to you all as official members of the first ever human mission to Mars: Leto. Congratulations!”

 

Amelia whooped, and Ivan began to applaud with everyone else around him. He smiled, his chest swelling with pride. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another cool reference I put in here: the mission's name, Leto, is the name of Apollo and Artemis's mother. The Apollo missions were the first set of missions to the moon, which included 12 human landings. By 2024, we hope to land once more on the moon, this time in a series of missions named Artemis, after Apollo's twin sister.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading through all my scifi rambling! This is my absolute favorite genre and I have so much fun writing it. Here are a few notes about the references you all may or may not have caught. When Ivan talks about thinking Ginevra's brother was the astronaut instead of her, that mirrors one of astronaut Scott Kelly's experiences, when he accidentally assumes a female astronaut's husband is the astronaut he will be training with. I've been reading Kelly's biography, Endurance, and it's helped me a lot with writing about what life is like in space and zero-g. The spaceship's Jackson module is named for Mary Jackson, who you may know from the movie Hidden Figures. She was one of NASA's 'computers' and their first black female engineer. Tranquillity Lunar Base was named in homage to the landing site of Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon. He landed in an area called the Sea of Tranquillity, and when he radioed the ground after landing, he used the callsign Tranquillity Base instead of Eagle to reassure that he had landed safely.


End file.
